


black asphodel

by hurryup



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Mob, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Established Relationship, M/M, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9038030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurryup/pseuds/hurryup
Summary: "One day, we could leave this all behind," Allen said later, staring at the ceiling, still naked. Against the white of the linens and washed out by the morning light, he was something of a ghost. "You and me, straight down the line, right?" Link didn't say anything at first. He was sitting at the far end of the bed, buttoning his shirt back up. Slowly, processing everything Allen was saying, he folded his cuffs into position. He hated wearing day-old clothes. He'd have to change immediately upon returning home. "Yeah," Allen continued, not waiting for Link's response, maybe not even anticipating one at all. "You have your baking. I have my piano. We could move somewhere far away. Maybe up North, where there's no Prohibition laws and we could drink champagne all day. You, me, and Montreal."





	

**Author's Note:**

> d. gray-man secret santa gift for howardlinkedin, who requested mafia linkllen! have a wonderful christmas!

  
Outside the Chicago speakeasy, an unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with an impermeable, murky night.  
  
Howard Link had already cased the joint, just in case a ladder-climbing Noah recognized him and tried something stupid, like opening fire. The logical escape route, he'd decided, would be through the back, through the service door through which crates of local homebrew were carted through in big soap boxes. There was another narrow staircase behind the kitchen, which (as far as he knows) leads to the roof of the neighbouring apartment complex. In his line of business, was better to anticipate trouble than to be caught unprepared.  
  
He came from through the front, acknowledging the bouncer with a curt nod and the mumble of a password. The bar itself wasn't accessible by the street, but rather stowed away at the basement of some forgettable deli. Despite it's modest cover, the establishment itself carried an air of fantastic waste. The moment you moved down, the column of air enclosed by the stairs carried past the plaintive sweetness of female perfumes and tartly alcoholic scents. Every aspect of the decor was plush and densely red, like the felt interior of a jewellery box.  
  
Here, the women were loose and was liquor was cheap— the unexpected backfire of the recent Prohibition.  
  
Link didn't dress, walk, or talk like a mafia dog, but the bartender still seemed to see right through him, regardless. He could see it in his eyes the moment he walked in; his hands slowed where'd they'd been polishing a tall glass, his eyes glassed over with wary apprehension. He followed Link with his eyes, seeming to anticipate violence. Link was sorely tempted to slide up against the counter and assure him there was no reason for concern. He had his target, and the one target only. Beyond that, Link hadn't yet developed much a taste for the blood of innocents.  
  
Or anyone's blood, for that matter.  
  
He'd met his fair share of sadists of his profession; and, in some mechanistic, purely intellectual sense, he could understand the satisfaction they gleamed from killing. Still, no matter how much he killed, he could never relate. He felt it was more a necessary evil; a distasteful task that he just so happened to be uniquely suited for. Carrying out orders, that was something he could abide.  
  
He wasn't the Family's killer; he was their weapon.  
  
He kept his back against the wall, scanning the crowds. The target was seated shoulder-to-shoulder with gangsters of his same stripes, knocking back Canadian Club whiskey. If Link's intel was any good, which it generally was, he'd leave on his own in a half hour, presenting the opportunity for a hit.  
  
A black server wandered towards Link and asked him if he could get him something. Link declined politely, but tipped him all the same, just so he could guarantee he'd be left alone.  
  
It was about then he took notice of the piano. Ordinarily, it was very unlike him to take notice of music; when he was on the job, he tended to block out all extraneous stimuli in favour of focusing on the details of the hunt. But as he turned his head to face it, a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind. He recognised the song.  
  
He recognised it, because the last time he'd heard it was in Allen's apartment, with the curtains pulled shut. Link turned the corner into the lounge, following the sound.  
Even though he was in Noah territory tonight, somehow, he hadn't considered the possibility of running into Allen Walker tonight.  
  
Seated at the piano, Allen's eyes flashed in the low lights. When he lifted his gaze from the keys, Link could see the blue-grey of them, then they fell again, absorbed in his playing. Just as Link set his teeth against his lower lip and tried to recall the exact shade of blue, settling somewhere between cornflower and steel, they turned towards him again and registered his presence.  
  
They held. Allen stopped playing.  
  
Link went over to the piano, and Allen angled his body towards him on the bench, the scar over his eye an unsettling point of juxtaposition against the angelic softness of his face.  
  
"Pretty brave of the Crows to send you into Noah territory," Allen said, low enough that only Link could hear.  
  
"I have my orders," Link said, terse. His eyes slanted sideways towards the exit, which was still visible from this end of the bar. It could be bad if the mark slipped away before Link had the chance to follow. When he looked back to Allen, he thought he could see the ghost of sadness flicker across his otherwise neutral expression. Allen didn't like to see Link while he was working. He didn't like to think about what Link did.  
  
Well, Link didn't much like thinking about what Allen did, either.  
  
"Are your orders any good?"  
  
"They're not for me to question."  
  
"That's bullshit," Allen said with some force.  
  
Link pinched the bridge of his nose with one gloved hand, but said nothing. He kept thinking he might come around, come to understand. Allen may not be a Crow, but he was wrapped up in the mafia game too. He should understand loyalty; understand what it meant to do what must be done.  
  
There was a beat. Silence flashed from the carpeting and the walls. It smote Link with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. Then, Allen released a sigh. The tension in his brow and mouth softened.  
  
"Alright, alright. Let's not do this, not right now. I didn't think I'd see you tonight," Allen murmured. His voice had become quiet with overtones of bleakness. His hands wandered over the piano, and with only the red fingers of the hand mottled by scars, he played the first lulling bars of some melody Link could not name. "I missed you."  
  
"I... missed you too," Link said sincerely. He thought about reaching out and taking Allen's hand from the keys, squeezing it reassuringly. But he did not. Instead, he looked down at his own hands, checking his gloves for nonexistent dust.  
  
He wondered where Allen would be tonight; whether he would be alone or not. Privately, selfishly, Link hoped that he would be. Better to be alone than in bad company.  
  
"Will I be seeing you soon?" Allen asked. "Tomorrow night?"  
  
Link shifted, unable to help but continue glancing back to the door. "Yes, if I can, unless—"  
  
"Unless your orders conflict," Allen finished, distasteful. Link still did not take Allen's hand, or touch his face, or beg the forgiveness he did not deserve but would be granted regardless.  
  
"Will you wait for me there?" Link said.  
  
"I'll wait. Whatever you choose, I'll still be there waiting," Allen said. Then, he smiled innocuously—at variance with his words. At this point Link could not discern Walker's degree of seriousness. Here was the whole tragedy of their relationship, compacted and compressed into small words, yet dealt with facetiously.

In his peripheral vision, Link watched his target move towards the door. He clapped one hand against his associate's back, then began to shimmy into his coat. Link's gaze followed his movements, and Allen's eyes followed that gaze.  
  
"Do you want to know who he is?" Allen said.  
  
"No," Link said.  
  
"He's a good man," Allen said, voice tight, raw. "I think he has children."  
  
"I need to go," Link said. The target was putting on his hat. It was a black Homburg with a short brim. Link didn't wear a hat, and neither did Allen. Allen did, however, wear a look that was something akin to disappointment.  
  
"I suppose you do, huh?"  
  
"Keep warm, Walker," Link said by way of goodbyes. He felt a twinge of regret as he turned to leave. Maybe he really should've damned it and taken Allen's hand after all.  
  
He followed the man through the bar and up the stairs. As he moved up that narrow enclose, he could distantly hear Allen resume his playing. The shimmering sound of it reminded him of the fallen snow.  
  
Allen had once told him that music was like communion between this world and the next. The way he played for Mana, he would now play for this man, who would certainly be dead before the hour was through.  
  
Link followed him, always at least ten feet behind, through the cold streets, one hand touching the gun in his shoulder holster. This goes on for about five blocks. Then, he mark turned into an apartment building, pushing inside with an immense shiver. He did not notice Link shadowing him.  
  
The mark punched the elevator call button once. Slowly, casually, Link came up behind him and waited with him. It took some minutes for it to arrive, and then they both climbed in. On the third floor, they stopped the elevator to let an old women hobble in with her laundry cart cart. Link wishes her a good evening, and she smiled, and the three of them all rode in silence until the sixth floor. She stepped off, and the elevator continues up to the tenth floor, where Link's target went off.  
  
Link went off with him, and walks down the hallway, past rows of identical doors. Link stood ten feet behind, pretending to check his watch while the mark fumbled with his keys. Link shifted slightly on the balls of his feet, listening for the telltale click of the door opening. When it opened, Link lined himself up behind the mark. The cool, sloe-eyed stare of his gun locked onto the mark's back.  
  
Link shot once. The gun had a silencer. The marked made a choked noise, bracing himself against the wall, so Link shot again, directly between his shoulder blades. Then the mark didn't make any kind of noise at all. Before the body could pitch forward into the hallway, Link shoved it into the apartment, stepping inside and swinging the door shut behind him.  
  
There were screams, instantly cut off by another shot, a soft/sharp sound. There was a body on the couch, a broad red splatter of blood and bone on the wall above the end table, blood speckling the carpets and the floor. Link tucked away his gun. He leaned down, checked the mark's pulse, then the witness' pulse. A young woman. His wife or daughter, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The blood bloomed from her like some kind of vespertine rose.  
  
They were dead.

It was over. It was all over.  
  
Link rode back down in the elevator, which stopped on the ninth floor, letting on a giggling pair of lovers, who rode with him all the way down to the ground floor but do not take notice of him. He left the way he came, walking two more blocks before hailing a taxi from the main road. Slipping into the back seat, he did not think about the bullets missing from his handgun, or the distant wail of police sirens, but instead, the lovers in the elevator. They seemed to belong to another reality.  
  
He tried to imagine a universe in which he and Allen could be so open with their affections, and found it impossible.  
  
He took the cab back home. From there, it took him less than an hour to drown out the last of guilt. More specifically, it took a lukewarm shower, a telephone call from Lvellie, and three simple words; _Good work, Link._  
  
At the sound, his grip tightened around the receiver. At the sound of Lvellie's voice, his entire posture changed; still and ramrod straight, like a soldier or a dog of war waiting on command.  
  
"Anything you need, sir," he found himself saying, and Christ, he meant it. With everything he was.  
  
Maybe Link was far from God, and maybe he was unfit for His mercy. All the same, everything Link did, he did for a reason—  and none of it, none it was for himself. His very soul was staked on that principle.  
  
It would have to be enough.

 

* * *

 

Unlike Link, Allen Walker had not been raised into a life of crime.  
  
Rather, Allen had gotten involved with the Noah family during the war, during which he'd been spared conscription on account of his youth and his bad arm. Also spared from conscription was his foster father, a man of increasingly poor health and (Link theorized) correspondingly slipping sanity.  
  
It was Mana's poor health that had led Allen to the Noah crime family. Allen had medical bills to pay, and the Noah were always happy to lend a hand, financially, provided you were were willing to put your soul on the line.  
  
Allen had been able to improve Mana's quality of life, and maybe even extend his life, but nothing lasts forever. Mana had died in 1919, four months after the end of the war. It was now 1924, and Allen still had his debts to pay; mingling with the worst of the city underneath the looming umbrella of the Noah's influence. That the Noah and the Crows were in constant conflict with one another was only one of several obstacles standing between Link and Allen.  
  
For one, they were both men in a God-fearing country.  
  
Link checked into the Chelsea hotel at eight o'clock in the evening, accepted the key from the desk, closed the elevator grill and waited out the ten-floor ride up to the room he'd be meeting Allen in today.  
  
As the elevator clicked from the sixth floor to the seventh, he fiddled with his cufflinks, straightening them out to be in perfect line with the seam of his shirtsleeves. Between the seventh and ninth floor, he remove his gloves and fold them into his pocket, and then, in a burst of stress, took them back out and put them back on.  
  
He always felt so unbearably on edge in these moments leading up. He wouldn't calm down until he had Allen in his arms, safe and sound.  
  
When he pushed the door open, Allen was already there. He was standing upright next to the bed like maybe he'd been sitting on it before Link had come inside, eyes alert and attentive on Link. Allen's suit jacket was strewn over a chair at the corner of the room. His gun was on the bedside table. He looked as painfully beautifully as the day Link had met him.  
  
"I wasn't sure you'd make it," Allen smiled, tension draining from his shoulders. Link shut the door behind him, and Allen went to go meet him.  
  
"I'm late," Link said to the floor. He went to work pulling his coat away from his shoulders, tucking his gloves into the pocket for a second time. "I apologize."  
  
"It's fine, it's fine!" Real relief in his voice. "I'm just glad to see you. Really."  
  
Link was tempted to throw his coat down onto the floor and kiss Allen right there, but managed to stave off. He folded up his coat quickly before depositing it on the chair, and then, took the time to fold up Allen's suit jacket as well. He could feel Allen rolling his eyes from behind him, but he was in a good enough mood, apparently, to put up with Link's idiosyncrasies.  
  
"You weren't followed?"  
  
"You know I'm smarter than that," Allen said. "What about you?"  
  
"No, I made sure." Link turned straightened up and turned around, getting his proper look at Allen close up. His face instantly fell into a frown. He reached out with one hand to cup Allen's face, realizing there was the beginnings of a bruise blooming high on his cheekbone. That hadn't been there yesterday. Link would have remembered. "My God, what happened to you?"  
  
Link's thumb brushed over the bruise, and Allen's expression clouded. Walling himself off.  
  
"Oh, this? Just, well. Work. You know how things can get," he said, something uncannily casual in his tone. Link did know. That was the hard part. Allen's eyes flickered away. "It's fine, really."  
  
Link was not comforted. Something dark and bitter and terribly familiar was stirring inside of him; something that made him sick to his stomach.  
  
"Who did this?"  
  
"Link, it's fine."  
  
"Is it really? Just hold still, let me take a look at it—"  
  
"I said it's _fine_ ," Allen repeated, firm, squirming visibly beneath Link's touch. Then, after a beat, his eyes returned. They were warm and laughing, now, and the coldness was gone from his voice. "Do you always have to be such a worrywart?"  
  
"I am not," Link countered, stubborn. "I'm simply... concerned."  
  
"Mm. Definitely a worrywart, hate to break it to you." Allen pulled Link's hand away from the bruise and took it in his, running his thumb along the knuckles. "Are you going to invite me to bed, or are we to stand here and squabble until morning comes?"  
  
Link blushed and stammered, and Allen took advantage of his silence to steal a kiss. He stepped in close, wrapping his arms around Link's shoulder before pressing his lips to Link's.

It was soft. More tender than sexy. A reassurance.

Link allowed himself to finally relax, finally, hands wandering towards Allen's lower back. Allen took this as encouragement, tightening his grip on Link and nudging his mouth open.  
  
It was perfect. Completely, totally perfect, so long as he didn't stop to wonder about who else Allen was kissing like this. So long as he didn't agonize over where Allen had been last night. So long as he didn't catch the scent of some unfamiliar cologne lingering over his skin.  
  
_They pay for this,_ Link reminded himself, steely, _and I don't. I don't. I love him. He loves me. That's all. That's all._  
  
"I was surprised to see you yesterday. I keep thinking..." Link fumbled for his next words for a few seconds. "I keep thinking that you looked good, playing the piano."  
  
Maybe someday, Allen could have just that— away from the mafia, from the guns and blood money and street fights. Just him and his piano. Maybe find some place legit to play. He certainly would have to cope with fewer bruises. And Link wouldn't have to cope with the thought of other mens' hands all over Allen's body.  
  
But then again, if Allen truly wanted to get away from the mafia, he'd also have to get away from Link.  
  
Unless. _Unless_.  
  
A sigh eased out of Link when Allen's hands wandered across his chest. Even through the fabric, his body responded to Allen's fingers, feeling hot and eager against his familiar touch.  
  
"It's odd, seeing you without being able to touch you," Allen said. He toyed with the front button of Link's shirt. Link watched his fingers. Although he didn't vocalize them, Link could sense his next words: _I hate it._  
  
"I know."  
  
"I wish it could be like this all the time."  
  
"I know," Link said, and then Allen surged back to kiss Link again, as if making up for lost time. All lost time.  
  
Allen had a peculiar kind of sensuality to him. Despite his youthful, delicate good looks, he was not made to seduce by being virginalized, fluttering, or coy. Rather, when he nipped at Link's lower lip and yanked on hair to deepen the kiss, he was challenging, and deeply, solidly assured. The erotic aggressive to Link's passive.

They kissed hard, long, deep. They kissed, and for the moment, it soothed the ache.  
  
Allen knew Link. He knew more of Link than just about anyone else, and what he had was the parts of Link that he held away from all others. Link was not gentle, rarely kind; usually brusque and cool toward his associates. But Allen? Allen was allowed to tear that professionalism away. In turn, Link tore determinedly at what Allen held aloft in front of him as a mask.

It was hard to say whether he'd come close to seeing the real Allen, though. Harder still to distinguish between that which Link had discovered and how much Allen had simply allowed him to see.  
  
In fact, he often felt he couldn't _ever_ be sure of what Allen was feeling. Even then, even gasping between his teeth as he worked— hurried, but not frantic, he was never frantic— to get the clasp of Allen's pants open, he wasn't sure.

He could only hope Allen was as happy with him as he claimed to be.  
  
"Allen." Link bowed his head, overcome."I love you."  
  
Allen didn't say anything. Instead, he pulled Link down onto the bed and buried his face against Link's neck.

 

* * *

 

 "One day, we could leave this all behind," Allen said later, staring at the ceiling, still naked. Against the white of the linens and washed out by the morning light, he was something of a ghost. "You and me, straight down the line, right?" 

Link didn't say anything at first. He was sitting at the far end of the bed, buttoning his shirt back up. Slowly, processing everything Allen was saying, he folded his cuffs into position. He hated wearing day-old clothes. He'd have to change immediately upon returning home.  
  
"Yeah," Allen continued, not waiting for Link's response, maybe not even anticipating one at all. "You have your baking. I have my piano. We could move somewhere far away. Maybe up North, where there's no Prohibition laws and we could drink champagne all day. You, me, and Montreal."  
  
"You can't stand the cold as it is," Link told him. He looped his tie around his neck and began to knot it. Allen rolled over in bed, sheets slipping from his chest to reveal his pale body, at once artful and obscene in his lack of shame.  
  
"Fine, not Montreal. Then... I guess there's Paris. I mean, if we're going French, we might as well go all the way. You know, I hear it's all very Bohemian in Montmartre. They probably wouldn't think anything about two men living together."  
  
Link actually managed to crack a smile at this. Paris? He tried to picture himself there with Allen, just the two of them in some room that smelled of freesia. Him lolling in bed in the mornings, beating bread in the afternoons, sleeping without a gun close at hand. No hazy smell of Cordite; no bodies. No more looking over one shoulder. As if his hands could ever be made clean again. He reached for his gloves, yanking one over his hand in one clean motion.  
  
"You and I, living among the Bohemians? I can scarcely imagine it."  
  
"Well. I can," Allen said, sotto. There was a pause. Link turned to take his gun back from the table. Allen must have been shifting again, because he heard the slow rustling of the fabric against skin. "I'd just like to be wherever you are in ten years. Isn't that a nice idea?"  
  
"It's a nice idea," Link agreed. He holstered his pistol and tested his shoulder. When he glanced back at Allen, he was no longer smiling.  
  
"But it's only an idea, isn't it?"  
  
"Well," Link said. "Ten years is a very long time."  
  
"A long time," Allen echoed, and he lapsed into a moody silence, looking as though he'd already been forsaken.  
  
Easy for Allen to dream of leaving the mafia behind. Not so easy for Link.

He thought of Tokusa with his fool's grin and Madarao's dark eyes, sometimes cold, sometimes thoughtful. They were like brothers to Link. He thought of Lvellie's hand clapping down over his shoulder in congratulations; his touch had a reassuring weight. _Good work, Link._  
  
Montreal? Paris? These were places for other people. They didn't even really register as real to Link. Chicago, the Family— that was all Link had ever known. They were real.  
  
"Meet me here again? Next week?" Allen reached out, touching Link's hand. Then, as if embarrassed by his own affection, he moved to retract it. Link sat back down next to Allen, taking his hand firmly in his own, holding it.  
  
"Next week," Link confirmed, leaning in to give Allen a dry peck on the forehead. "I promise."

 

* * *

 

Link broke his promise.  
  
Instead, he spent that evening saddled with an unexpected contract handed down directly from Lvellie. The kind that could not be refused; a Noah rival who had killed one of their own. A man Link himself had known. A good man.  
  
Link was fairly certain he'd had children.  
  
Remembering the way Allen had dissolved into laughter against Link, smile sweet and dopey, Link felt like something of a traitor. A hypocrite. Killing Noahs in the evening, then taking their whores into his bed before nightfall.

_Noah whore._

Those weren't Link's favorite words to ascribe to Allen.  
  
Kneeling in a penthouse suit with the scope of a sniper rifle focused on the window of the building opposite, Link watched the rain pour down outside, waiting with aching stillness and a keen eye for his target to come to the window.  
  
There would always be nights like this, Link reminded himself sternly. Nights one of them couldn't make it, where circumstances made seeing one another impossible. That was the price of keeping a clandestine male lover from another gang. It rather came with the territory, didn't it?  
  
All the same, as the buttery leather of his gloves handled the wooden polish of the gun, he couldn't help but thing of Allen, waiting alone and without hope.  
  
Maybe he was watching the rain come down, too.  
  
Link bit down his guilt and swallowed it whole. He'd find a way to pass a message along to Allen tomorrow. Have a note sent to his apartment. Perhaps flowers, too, as an apology. That was suitably romantic, wasn't it?  
  
There was a shadow in the glass. Link pulled the trigger, braced for impact.

 

* * *

 

 A dozen red roses, as it turned out, was not enough to buy back Allen Walker's spurned affections. The next time they managed to meet, Allen seemed distant, feigning interest in the cracks and the whorls in the floor beneath them as to avoid Link's eyes.  
  
Maddening boy.  
  
Allen stretched out languid against the sofa, one knee drawn up as he fished a cigarette from his pack on the table, lighting it with a match-pop and a wisp of sulphur. Sighing out a plume of smoke, he listened to Link with a silent, unreadable expression, thin shirt doing little in the morning sun to conceal the movement of his body beneath. Now and then it rode a little high. Link wondered, sourly, if Allen's clients found him as irresistible as he did.  
  
That was the first time he offered to pay Allen's debts.  
  
It had seemed, to Link, a logical solution to what seemed to him to be an increasingly distressing issue. He made his fair share and then some, in his line of business. Allen would be happier if he was free of the Noah, wouldn't he?  
  
Still, Allen need pull even further away from Link at the very suggestion, eyes growing narrow.  
  
"I don't want your money," Allen said, his response automatic. Sharper than Link had expected. It opened a black pit of malaise in the base of his stomach.  
  
"Don't be _stubborn_ ," Link retorted, taken aback. "I want to help you, Allen— you know I find the things you have to do... distasteful."  
  
"Distasteful? Are we going to talk about this? Are we really?" Allen stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray, barely half-smoked. "Why don't we talk about your profession, _Howard_. Why _don't_ we."  
  
"I'm not ashamed of what I do," Link said haltingly.  
  
"And I should be. Naturally." Allen tipped his head back, curling up into himself. "What a backwards world you must live in, where sex deals a greater moral injury than murder. Oh, unless I'm fucking you, that is— in which case, all's fine and dandy."  
  
Link pursed his lips into a hard line, feeling his temper wear thin.  
  
"Don't be pointlessly antagonistic. It's unbecoming of you."  
  
" _Unbecoming_? Don't you belittle me, you're always like this—"  
  
"All I want," Link interrupted, " is to help you with your debt."  
  
"What, so I can be in _your_ debt? I'm not— I'm not your kept boy, Link. I don't belong to you!"  
  
"Of _course_ you belong to me!" Link burst out, voice raw. "You belong to me, and I belong to you! Those are the fundamentals of a relationship!"  
  
Allen rose to his feet, stalking up to Link with menacing speed, grabbing him by the front of his shirt in a kind of blind fury. He looked Link in the face, eyes wide with incredulity. "God. Can you even hear yourself right now?"  
  
God, no, Link couldn't hear himself. Each word that escaped him was drowned out by the din of jealousy. In that moment, it overtook him completely, as if some kind of paralytic illness.

Trapped behind his eyelids were the phantom images of Allen being touched by strange hands, kissed by strange lips, fucked by the nameless and the faceless. It was the first and only time in his life that Link had ever understood the burden of imagination. Ordinarily, his own was blessedly silent. Did Allen cry out for them? Did he shiver and moan? Did he kiss them to fill silence, just like he kissed Link?  
  
His next words came with a seething edge, cold and purposeful.  
  
"You think I'm _happy_ to sit idly by each evening, wondering where you are, wondering who you're— you're _selling_ yourself to—"  
  
He was cut off by the shock of a resounding slap to the face.

Link took a step back, more out of surprise than pain, reaching up to touch his own face.  
  
"I don't," Allen said, the words sounding as if they were being wrenched forcibly from his heart. "I don't want your money. I want to be your equal."  
  
Link's lips parted, but he could not find the strength to speak. Something about the slap had stunned him into silence.  
  
"You belong to me, I belong to you," Allen repeated listlessly. All his fury, all his fight had drained from him in that one explosive act of violence. "God. You don't— you don't have to _pretend_ to choose me, alright? I get it. I really do. So, please, just... give it a rest."  
  
Allen trembled, and still, Link could do nothing but watch Allen through the still fan of his fingertips.  
  
Later, they had angry, hurried sex— during which Allen's hands were never still. He fisted at the sheets, slid his hands over Link's shoulders, dragged nails down his back. He never quieted, either, always cursing and praying but never really saying anything.

It was enough for Link, desperate and lonely for Allen's touch.  
  
Following their climaxes, they dragged themselves apart wordlessly. Side by side. Link was on his back, supporting himself on his elbows. Allen was on his stomach, face partially hidden. He could hear Allen's breathing, initially labored, but slowly evening itself out into deep, regular breaths.  
  
Allen buried his face into the pillow, shielding himself. Link attempted to evaluate his situation. Every situation bore some consequence. What did this mean for them? He didn’t know. Allen's silence seemed to communicate a lot to him, but he wasn’t sure what, or how to communicate back.  
  
_I really do love you,_ Link thought. He ran one hand down the length of Allen's back, trying to comfort him. _I wish I could choose you. I wish—_  
  
Allen shifted away.

 

* * *

 

Madarao came with Link's newest contract a little past midnight; he was a bit of a vampire, the way he always came and went at night. All the same, Link could see no harm in it. He himself could be trusted to be awake late until the night. Insomnia, maybe, or something not too far from it. Restlessness was quick to overtaken him even after brief spurts of sleep.

Madarao wandered in past the threshold, the sloe-eyed track of his stare roving about Link's apartment with apparent disaffection.  
  
"You have three days," he said, turning over a thick manila folder over to Link. Link braced his back against the kitchen counter, thumbing it open with one hand.  
  
The photo clipped to the side was grainier than soot in black and white, but Link could't have mistaken it for anyone else, not in a hundred years.  
  
Allen Walker, dressed in soft linens, in scars, in the sometimes wondrous pall of his own self-assurance and defiance.  
  
Madarao might, to the same effect, have punched Link in the gut.  
  
Link felt cold terror piercing his chest, felt his composure threatening to slip. He stared down at the file, struggling to say something, struggling to say nothing. Madarao watched him, always watched him, with that long and impassive stare.  
  
"Do you know why?"  
  
"No clue," Madarao said. He shrugged. "He's some kind of male whore, isn't he? Maybe he was a bad fuck."  
  
Link had to fight to keep his expression neutral.  
  
"Did Lvellie authorize this?" He said. His throat had suddenly gone very dry; he had to swallow hard before continuing to speak. "Could I possibly... consult him?"  
  
The boss is busy attending to other business," Madarao said. Then, something in his expression faltered, and his was no longer the face of a colleague, but that of a long-trusted friend. "I'm afraid I'm not in any position to contact him. Is there a problem, Link?"  
  
Link's gaze was torn back down to the contract; only an address and a handful of physical identifiers typeset against stark white. Then, he looked back up to Madarao's dark, familiar eyes. There was some soft emotion there.  
  
Link realized that it was _pity_.  
  
_This is a test,_ he realized. _A staggering thought. They know. They know.  
_  
Madarao reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette. Without breaking eye contract, he balanced it between both lips and lit it with the crackle of a match. The smoke rose between them. It smoldered. It dissipated.  
  
"Of course not," Link said in a voice that was not quite his own. "No problem at all."  
  
Madarao went up to Link, right into his space, and took the folder from him. He opened it, looked at that grainy photograph at Allen.  
  
"We all make mistakes, sometimes," he said. His voice was low, nearly inaudible, like a man close to prayer. He put his cigarette to his lips and took another long drag. He released it in a single, clipped breath. "But there's always, always forgiveness to be found for those who are able to correct them. I have faith in you, Link."  
  
Suddenly, the full weight of Madarao's fraternal love felt unbearably heavy. Link was just about ready to topple beneath it.  
  
In a burst of nervous energy Link went to the window and threw it open, letting his foul smoke drift up and out of his apartment. Was there such thing as retroactive grief? He felt the absence of Allen already, and it was tearing a hole right through his heart. It echoed back through the days and months. It polluted his every memory. Touches, kisses, smiles; the very thought of them now made him ill.  
  
"Three days, Link."  
  
A damp breeze came whistling through the open window; the advance guard of a coming storm. Link bowed his head, overcome.  
  
"I understand," he said.

 

* * *

 

No gun could be considered unloaded until you made sure to look through the barrel. It was Lvellie who'd told him that; always stern but patient in his explanation of the world. A round could be left inside, either in the chamber or stuck in the barrel. That must have been about ten years ago. Link a skinny, knock-kneed adolescent, desperate to run about with gangsters, to be their dog.  
  
Better to be in bad company than to be alone.  
  
Link opened up the chamber of his gun and looked through the barrel from back to front.

It was all clear.  
  
Numbly, he stripped his gun into it's major components. Barrel, slide, guide rod, frame and magazine. He washed it. This was a ritual of his, before and after a kill. This was something he could control. He cleaned the action with solvent. He wiped down the barrel with luster cloth. It gleamed in the dim lamplight.  
  
It made his situation feel painfully, intimately real.  
  
He reloaded the pistol.  
  
No sound could possibly be as disquieting as that sharp, mechanical _click_.

 

* * *

 

The city was crouched beneath the dark, lustreless moon. It cowered in shame, turning its face away from the stars.  
  
The rain started to come down about halfway of the way to Allen's apartment; it came down all at once in an enormous downpour, enveloping the city in a vertical sheet of rain. In a turn of events that was very much unlike him, he'd forgotten an umbrella. All the same, he hardly noticed the rain. His mind was elsewhere.  
  
Lvellie's forgiveness, God's forgiveness. Allen's hair and skin, as white and as sweet as asphodels; pallid and ghostly and at one with death.  
  
The rain ran in rivulets from his hair and down his neck. It washed the scent of smoke from his skin, but Link could still feel it lurking it inside him, like some kind of ghost that had taken hold of him. It possessed him utterly.  
  
He'd navigated himself, almost blindly, to Allen's door. He stood there for a long minute.

He felt suspended there, as if by string.  
  
He knocked. There was the sound of rustling inside. Whatever music had been playing inside came to a halt. Maybe Allen had removed the needle from a record, or maybe that had been his own playing? Link hadn't been paying attention to the melody.  
  
The door swung open, and there was Allen, bright-eyed and alert, leaning against the door frame. He looked like a good illustration, chin raised a little jauntily and outlined by an impressive chiaroscuro.  
  
"Link?" Allen said. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Do you mind if I come in?" Link asked, then he paused, feeling the absurd flit of that familiar fear. "Are you alone?"  
  
Allen blinked.  
  
"Of course I am, why wouldn't I... nevermind, don't tell me," Allen leaned against the door frame, looking at Link up and down. "Christ, Link. You're soaked."  
  
"Well, I'm not certain if you've noticed, but it's raining outside," Link said. His words were punctuated ironically by a clap of thunder. He wondered if he sounded like his regular self. He didn't feel like his regular self. The moment Allen opened the door, Link had been struck by an inescapable dread.  
  
Falling in love with Allen—  that had been his mistake. His unalterable, damning mistake. They would kill him if he failed to correct it.

It would kill him if he succeeded in correcting it.  
  
Allen held Link's gaze for a fraction of a moment that spun itself out infinitely; and then he sighed, shook his head, and stepped out of the way. He held the door open. Link went inside gratefully. Allen closed the door behind the both of them.  
  
"Are you... is everything alright?"  
  
Link never thought he'd hate Allen so much for being so adroit when it came to reading his moods. He rubbed one hand down over his face, the damp of his gloves against the damp of his forehead. Suddenly, the weight of his gun bearing down in his holster felt immense. Like a brick.  
  
"Hey, don't ignore me," Allen said, but he was evidently too worried to be properly contrite. "You're making me nervous."  
  
He went to Link's side and put a hand on Link's shoulder. Link shrugged him off and walked to the other side of the room.  
  
Allen's apartment had a beautiful lived-in quality to it. Link's own apartment was clinically, terminally empty. There was so little to it that made it his own. There was life here, in the photos on Allen's corkboard, in the sheafs of cluttered sheet music on the bench, in the little glass ashtray and empty pie dishes cluttering the sink. Link was not even entirely certain he lived in his own body. There was so little evidence in suggestion of the idea.  
  
"Link?" Allen probed. His voice had a fantastic echo to it; it reverberated throughout the entire room with a haunting force. Link reached into his coat for his gun. He wrapped his hand around the grip. It greeted him like an old friend.  
  
Link turned around, and found that Allen had become very still. He was waiting, now, for Link to speak.  
  
Was it cliched to say he only felt he'd lived when he was with Allen? It was the first time, at least, he'd wanted something for himself.  
  
Killing Allen meant killing himself.  
  
It was the very same thing, wasn't it?  
  
Link's hand fell away from his gun.  
  
"Pack your things," Link said. His voice was drowned out by the insistent hammering of his heart.  
  
Allen's eyes went very wide. His lips parted. Whatever he had expected to hear, it had not been this.  
  
"I'm— I'm _sorry_?"  
  
"I asked you to pack your things," Link said, this time with greater force. "You wanted to see Paris, didn't you? Montmartre? Then we'll see Paris. Or Montreal. Anywhere you'd like. But we need to leave tonight."  
  
" _Tonight?_ " Allen repeated, looking very thoroughly baffled.  
  
"Tonight," Link confirmed. He clasped his hands together very tightly, expression splintering to reveal the desperation lurking beneath. "I'm... under orders to kill you. I... just. Pack your things. Please."  
  
Allen went up to Link, moving with a slow, almost unearthly poise.  
  
"Fucking shit," he breathed, a jarring vulgarity Link would have disdained had he not been so rattled. "You're... you're serious, aren't you?"  
  
"Would I joke about this?" Link pinched the bridge of his nose, taking in a deep breath of air to steady his nerves. "I've made my choice, and I— I choose you. And now, I need you to trust me, Allen. Can you do that?"  
  
Allen opened his mouth, then closed it, apparently speechless. After a long beat, he nodded; something in motion jerky and almost mechanical.  
  
"I'll meet you here in an hour's time," Link continued, now speaking in a rush. "I need to go home and grab my things. One hour, alright?"  
  
"... Alright. Alright."  
  
Link started towards the door, but he grabbed Link's hand before he could go. "Link?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I love you."  
  
Link felt his heart slowly, slowly come undone, as though someone was tugging an immense knot in him loose.  
  
"I love you, too."  
  
How beautiful it was to live in the truth.  
  
"You and me, straight down the line," Allen promised him. Link reached out and touched his face, running the pad of his thumb down the familiar shape of that age-old scar. Right then, the room was so full of words. The air was heady with them. For the first time in his life, Link was suddenly struck by an immense, articulate understanding of his own emotions; he could think of a thousand things to say to Allen. Perhaps, one of these days, he would find the time. "I... just hurry back soon, alright?"  
  
For now, he was able to say this;  
  
"I will. I promise."  
  
He eased the door open, slipping back into that dark, endless downpour.

The night was still black, but all of a sudden, the sky seemed a little bigger.

 

* * *

 

Link rode back home through the empty streets, possessed by some half-euphoric, half-terrified mania. He'd never felt so wired in all his life, not even on the day he'd first kissed Allen.

(And what a day that had been.)  
  
They could go anywhere, by anyone. He was seized and stunned by the magnitude of such that realization. It had never occurred to him in all his life just how dizzyingly vast the capacity for human choice was.  
  
They could wander the Pine Barrens, or the golden prairies out in the Midwest, or the sprawl of New York City— which sprawled and sprawled with greater urgency each day. They could take the boat up to England and gawk outside the palace like a pair of dumbstruck tourists. Montreal, with it's slanting streets and stony charm, was only a bus away... and then there was Paris. They could fill their home with all the flowers of the Provence.

Baking and piano and trading mindless kisses.  
  
What had seemed impossible to Link not so long ago were now immediately in the realm of the possible. Who would have known life itself could be so possible? Something opened up in him, opened in the most flower-like way. It was like there was a growing plenitude in him. Something that had never been there before.  
  
Link had made his choice. He was turning his heart over to Allen, this time, completely. He would make Allen the singular object of his devotion. His constant.  
  
Link shouldered into his empty little apartment, pulled his only suitcase out of the closet, and began folding up his clothes. He hefted his second-best gun, loaded it, packed it on the inside of a white button-down shirt with an untapped box of bullets. He grabbed all the money he had in his apartment; packed it without taking the time to even count it—  
  
Then, he heard the door click open from behind him, and he knew.

It was over. It was all over.  
  
Link went very still. His hands froze where they'd been working at the latches of his suitcase. He did not turn around. He didn't need to.  
  
You could run from yourself, but you could never run from God.  
  
"I suppose you're here to kill me," Link said, sotto. He bowed his head, overcome.  
  
There was the sharp sound of a gun being cocked.  
  
"I'm sorry it has to be this way, Link."  
  
"It's alright," Link said, shutting his suitcase slowly. He turned around to face his killer. He did not even possess the strength to feel betrayed. "On some level, I feel I've always known it might come to this."  
  
"May God have mercy on your soul."  
  
"There's no need for that," Link smiled. "I'm sure he won't."  
  
Then, with a brilliant crack of smoke, the gun went off.

**Author's Note:**

> hurryupfic @ tumblr


End file.
